


Be Still My Foolish Heart (don't ruin this on me)

by Theatricuddles



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2020-10-18 09:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20637047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theatricuddles/pseuds/Theatricuddles
Summary: Caleb got away from Ikithon.Now he needs to figure out how to keep existing in a world where he's terrified of everyone.Mollymauk and Caduceus help.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Clayleb and Widoclaymauk tags will not be relevant until a few chapters later, but they will happen, so take that into account.

It has been seventy-two hours since Caleb has last slept.

*

A scholarship and an internship both is what his parents had been told when he’d signed up. Ikithon Labs would cover the cost of Bren’s tuition and provide him with a job doing important research. Sure, he would have to take some time to work at the lab during the summer, but Bren had been prepared for that possibility. And now that his financial aid had fallen through in only his second year of college, he didn’t really have a lot of other options.

And he’d met Astrid, and Eodwulf, and for maybe a week or two before the research started in earnest, Bren was eager to work there.

But then their first assignment went horribly wrong. They were supposed to be investigating the presence of ghosts, or so Ikithon had told them. Bren hadn’t been told what they’d been researching prior to this and assumed they’d just be monitoring a building to see if anything weird happened. It was a “simple assignment”. They’d barely have to do a thing.

But they’d come in on a woman who’d been handcuffed to the floor, and the other technicians had told them to just try and keep her calm.

That hadn’t gone great, to say the least.

Wulf had tried to keep her shoulders on the ground, and Bren had sat by her head and said things to try and calm her down, until she’d screamed, louder than should’ve been physically possible.

The three of them had sat, frantically trying to get her to stop screaming, until one of the other technicians had said, “Out of the way!” and the three of them had been herded out of the building. As they’d been walking away, Bren heard a gunshot.

That had been the first incident, but far from the last. It was a bit of a shock to the three of them, transitioning from maybe considering the possibility of ghosts to knowing that they were real and they could hurt you. But despite that, the three of them never seemed to learn much of anything beyond what they observed themselves. The other scientists had all kinds of instruments (some more dangerous-looking than others), but none of them were even permitted to see the results. And half the time, assignments ended similarly: getting herded out of the place with ghost activity long before any of the other researchers left.

They were only ever given parts of information, or occasionally no information at all besides a single instruction. “Search for this.” “Stay in this chair.” “Hold them down.”

Another possibility was that parts of Bren’s days had been going missing. He hadn’t mentioned it to Wulf or Astrid, not wanting to worry them, but normally he knew every moment, and having spans of whole hours or even sometimes days missing was odd. He’d chalked it up to stress until Astrid, skin pallid, had turned to him one night and asked, “Do you remember anything before noon today?” When he’d answered in the affirmative, she shook her head in confusion. “I don’t,” she said very quietly. “It’s just… gone.”

And Bren noticed that all of them seemed to be exhausted near-constantly. And there were needle pricks around their wrists sometimes when no one remembered what caused them. (Astrid took her estrogen in pill form, so it couldn’t have been hormone shots, at least not for all of them.) And sometimes, Astrid and Wulf seemed almost more standoffish, more aggressive than they normally were, which they didn’t seem to even notice until Bren pointed it out to them. And sometimes, parts of Bren’s body ached for no reason: his ribs, his head, his hands. And occasionally for a day or two, there would be a glossy sheen over their eyes, little flecks of gold in the pupil. Almost impossible to notice unless you were checking each other repeatedly for it.

So, gradually, the three of them started making plans to leave. But they knew that, even as little as they had been told, they’d still been told too much. Ikithon must have had a lot of friends in high places, because no one ever seemed to come by to inspect the safety of their lab or what they were actually researching. People who had left the company were always spoken about in the past tense. When Eodwulf started asking around about those who left, anyone who listened looked at him like he was speaking another language. “You don’t just leave,” one of them explained. “You stay until your job is done or the research is finished."

They didn’t just need to leave. They needed to disappear entirely. There needed to be no such people as Bren, Astrid, and Eodwulf.

So, in conversations held only in places they’d confirmed weren’t monitored, in notes slipped discretely between participants and encrypted just for safety, the three of them had a plan. And it was a good thing too, because during one meeting with Mr. Ikithon, Bren had noticed a folder on his desk with their parents’ names on it.

Of course, then the plan fell apart around the same time Astrid did.

They’d kept going on assignments, because what other choice did they have? And on this one, a man had apparently drowned. They went looking for his ghost, but they didn’t find a ghost. When they stepped into the building, Astrid had gotten smashed under a falling beam. She’d been standing next to Bren one moment, holding his hand, and the next she was on the floor, crying out in pain. Eodwulf had shoved against the beam as hard as he could so that Bren could pull her out, and the reflexive cry of pain she’d made had made Bren wish he could drop to his knees and cling to her and cry too. But there was no time for that. Other parts of the building were creaking ominously. Bren wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and Wulf picked her up around her waist as gingerly as he could manage. The span of forty feet between them and the door felt like a mile, chunks of ceiling falling all around them, and as the three of them fell to the ground outside, arms wrapped around each other tightly, the building behind them caved in as they heard some kind of agonized wail from inside.

The doctors later confirmed what Caleb had already guessed. The beam had damaged her so badly she wouldn’t walk again anytime soon. If ever.

So Bren couldn’t run, not without the two people who were most of the reason he was still alive. None of them could run when Astrid couldn’t even stand.

Bren laid awake all that night, trying to think of a way out of this situation. Ikithon was going to start monitoring them more heavily soon. They’d made too many mistakes, gotten too sloppy. If they didn’t do the work well enough, he would keep paying them short visits, to make sure they wouldn’t “try anything ridiculous” (his words, not theirs). Their opportunities for escape got smaller and smaller the longer they stayed.

So he went to visit Astrid, so small-looking in her hospital bed. And he held her.

And as he wrapped his arms around her, she’d whispered in his ear, “Go. Get out. We’ll find you again.”

Eodwulf had squeezed his shoulder then, and Bren wasn't sure what he’d ever done to deserve them, but he was so, so happy he had.

“I love you,” he’d said quietly, not caring if it was completely innocuous. He didn’t want their monitors to be privy to this, to be privy to his love for both of them.

So later that day, he’d met with Trent one last time. “I’m sorry, I think the injury of my teammate has left me feeling a little panicked. May I go home to visit my parents for just a day or two, before our next assignment?”

If Trent had seen through him here, he might as well have dropped dead where he stood. It probably would’ve been a nicer end than any this institution had planned for him.

But luckily for Bren, he’d gotten very good at looking like a terrified wreck. His performance must’ve been convincing enough.

Ikithon let him go.

*

And now, here he is, seated on the train, returning to his childhood home for the last time.

He should sleep on the train, but constant bone-chilling fear leaves that an impossibility. He sits with his bag under the seat and tries not to look as jumpy as he feels.

He really shouldn’t, above all, reveal more to his parents than they need to know. But as he sits down at the kitchen table, all of it and more comes spilling out. The things they’d done, the things he remembered and the things he couldn’t, the fear that had haunted him near-constantly for months.

When he finally finishes explaining everything, his father slowly pulls an exhausted Bren into his arms. Bren manages to avoid crying. At least, for now. He has at least two more sleepless nights to get through.

The fire absolutely has to look accidental. If it looks even slightly like arson, someone at Ikithon Labs will be able to guess that maybe it was intentional. So that night, a crossed wire in the garbage shed sets the petunia bed alight, before it spreads to the right side of the house. In the beds, a few body parts that Bren had managed to scavenge from various sites he’d been sent to slumber peacefully. By the morning, they will be too badly burnt to be recognizable as human flesh. Out by the back fence are crates, boxes, and bags: as many of their belongings as one could think to take with them. Bren had known, when he was planning this, which of his things he could afford to keep and which he simply couldn’t carry.

It doesn't make any difference when he’s lying there, frantically clinging to his parents, watching his former life burn.

He knows they are unrelated to this. He knows they will be safer without him traveling with them. So he sends them with new identification introducing them as Martin and Alicia Widogast and gives them the train and bus route to take to get to the backup place, the one he and Astrid and Wulf had promised each other they’d run to if they couldn’t escape together. He hopes they’ll be okay carrying all their belongings with them--he’d assumed there’d be two more sets of hands to carry it with.

He tells his parents he’ll join them in a couple of days. And he almost does.

He’s waiting in line to buy a bus ticket when he thinks he sees a woman who looks like Astrid and feels a panic attack coming on. He steps out of line to confirm it’s not her, and of course, it isn’t, his Astrid is thousands of miles away in a hospital bed, but he realizes something.

As long as he is around his parents, he is a threat to them. They will have to keep hiding as long as he can be certain someone is looking for him. And he will never be certain no one is looking for him unless he is dead, for real this time.

And really, him getting to go somewhere new and live with his family is a far better ending than he deserves. Maybe for Bren, who was burned alive in his own bed. But certainly not for Caleb, who left his two best friends behind to their death because of his own cowardice. He knows that they’re probably still alive, at least for the time being, but that almost makes him feel worse. Because he can’t go back, not now.

So he buys a bus ticket, not really caring to where so long as it’s not to anywhere near the location of his parents. If they even made it that far.

He rides the bus for miles and miles until he can’t anymore.

He counts out the amount of cash he has. It isn’t much since he couldn’t withdraw a huge amount without rousing suspicion, and he obviously can’t use that card anymore now, not when Ikithon labs could find him through it if they have even slightly crooked cops on staff. Which Caleb already knows that they do.

He considers getting a hotel for the night, but then thinks better of it. The weather isn’t to the point where a night of exposure will kill him, at least not faster than dehydration or starvation will. He finds a relatively cool spot on the pavement and falls asleep clutching his backpack.

When he blinks awake, there’s someone looking down at him.

The man looking down at him is brown-skinned, with black hair pulled back into a messy ponytail. He has a soft stomach and his hands look calloused. He has a sleeve of tattoos up his arm, leading to some peacock feathers decorating the side of his neck. He is wearing a sun earring in one ear and a moon in the other, and he is wearing possibly the loudest coat Caleb has ever seen, a horrendous mess of patchwork combined with embroidered maroon fabric with gold accents everywhere.

He is also probably the most beautiful man Caleb has ever seen in his entire life.

“Would you care to join me for dinner?” he asks.

Caleb’s heart is pounding way too fast in his ears, but he wills himself to calm down. This did not look anything like the kind of person who would hurt him. Besides, if he’d been trying to hurt or steal from Caleb, he almost definitely would’ve done it when Caleb was still asleep. Caleb swallows. “I’m afraid I’m in no condition to repay you,” he says quietly as his hand goes to the strap of his backpack.

“That’s not quite what I meant, I’m afraid,” the other man says. “I’m sleeping under the stars tonight, and I noticed that you happen to be, as well. I happened to have a little extra from performing today, so I decided why not share the wealth? No offense meant, but you look like you’re having a rough go of it,” he says. “Up to you!”

Caleb considers for a few seconds. On the one hand, this other man is essentially a walking neon sign. Any chance of blending in is next to nonexistent when he is around. On the other hand… Caleb is unlikely to get much company in the coming months.

“Where do you perform?” he asks, in an attempt to put off answering.

“Wherever there are curious people,” the other man says. He takes a step back and does a handstand, his coin purse falling out of his pocket with a loud clatter. Cursing under his breath, he quickly stands back up on his feet and starts gathering up the coins that are currently rolling all around the pavement. “As you can probably tell, I’m an acrobat and, if need be, a dancer,” he says, “but it’s not quite the same without the rest of the act.”

Slowly, Caleb tugs his bag onto his back. “And your name?”

“Depends who I have the pleasure of speaking to, but usually, Mollymauk, or Molly to my friends,” Mollymauk says, walking after a coin that was lazily wobbling towards the edge of the curb.

“Would you consider me a friend, then? Generally, friends invite each other to eat,” Caleb says. He’s stalling, and he knows it. Mollymauk probably knows it too.

“Well, I’m not sure you’re a friend _yet, _but there’s always more time in the evening,” Mollymauk says. “And you seem fairly trustworthy. I mean, I could’ve lost all my money there, and I didn’t. That has to count for something.” He grins.

Caleb is running out of excuses. “I’m Caleb,” he says finally. “But you do not need to pay for my food. I have some money with me. I would hate to impose.”  
  
“Not an imposition if I was the one who suggested it, but suit yourself, I suppose,” Mollymauk says. “I should probably warn you before we set out that I had McDonald’s in mind. I have a little surplus this evening, but not that much surplus,” Mollymauk smiles.

“Ja, that’s fine,” Caleb says, getting to his feet.

“Caleb, you said? Nice name,” Mollymauk remarks as they walk. “Any particular plans for the rest of the evening, Caleb?”

“Going to sleep,” Caleb says quietly, “and perhaps washing up if I find a place to do so.”

“Solid plan,” Mollymauk says. “I’m glad for the company,” he adds, sliding his coat off and draping it over the arm that isn’t currently pulling a rollaboard. “Too hot,” he says by way of explanation. “At any rate, it’s nice to have someone to eat with. I can always use someone who’s a good listener. Of course, there’s my audience, but they’re not quite the same, and on occasion, they’ll chase me away.”

Despite himself, Caleb laughs. Mollymauk immediately grins.

“Oh good! You looked so sad while you were lying there I was a little worried you’d forgotten what happiness is. I’m so glad I helped you remember,” he says.

“So, would you like me to call you Mollymauk, then?” he finds himself asking as they cross a bridge.

Mollymauk considers for a moment. “I think, as long as you keep smiling like that, you can call me whatever you want to,” he says.

Caleb laughs again. “Certainly, Mollymauk.”

*

The two of them stop outside a building with familiar golden arches. Mollymauk leaves his suitcase sitting outside, asking, “Could you watch this for me?’

“I still need to give you some money for dinner,” Caleb says.

“Look, you can if you really must, but this is just more efficient for both of us,” he answers. “Trust me, we don’t want to bring our stuff in. Last time I did, some nosy old person decided to chew me out for daring to have my belongings on me and eating in a public restaurant. Honestly, the nerve of me, eating while homeless.”

“Alright, but I’m paying you first,” Caleb says, rummaging through his bag for his wallet.

“Trust me, I’m not one to turn down generosity, and I’ll be sure to keep that in mind for next time,” Mollymauk says with a wink, “but you still haven’t told me what you want.”

Caleb tries to remember what was at a McDonald’s. His parents hadn’t really taken him much when he was younger, and he hadn’t had time to go out and get food with the other college kids. Too busy studying.

“Ummm…” Well, they had burgers. Although Caleb has never been too fond of burgers. He tried to read the menu inside, but the yellow tinted glass made it practically illegible. All he could make out was an ad for “New triple-stack Big Mac”. Whatever that meant.

“Caleb? Do you have an idea of what you want?”

“I am sorry, I d-“

Before he can finish, Mollymauk shushes him. “Not used to ordering from McDonald’s? It’s okay. I’ll be sure to get you what’s good. Or at least what I like. That sound okay?”

Caleb nods. He isn’t really sure what else to do, and besides, he didn’t give Mollymauk that much of his money.

While Mollymauk darts off to the entrance, he sits down on the curb and tries to shove his panic down somewhere that he can feel it less.

Mollymauk had mentioned “next time.” How is Caleb possibly supposed to tell him he’s actually getting on another bus to nowhere in particular at the first opportunity? This is a bad idea. He absolutely shouldn’t have come. Well, maybe he could stay just another week?

What is he thinking? He just decided that he was too dangerous to seek out his parents and too cowardly to go back for his friends. What’s to say that any of the patrons at this restaurant couldn’t be working for Ikithon labs? He has no time for this. He should’ve just stayed sleeping next to the building where Mollymauk had found him to begin with.

He is debating whether or not to just bolt when he sees Mollymauk coming back with two greasy bags of food, an ice cream cone held between two fingers.

“You alright there? You look like you might’ve seen a ghost,” he says, sitting down on the curb next to Caleb.

The mention of ghosts brings back, unbidden, the memory of a woman screaming. Caleb swallows hard to keep from retching. He rests his head on his knees, tries to form words that won’t come out. “Mollymauk…” he manages to croak.

“Can you still nod?” Mollymauk asks.

He nods.

“Can I try something that might help?” Mollymauk asks.

He nods again.

He feels something heavy on his shoulders. He realizes that it’s the jacket Mollymauk was wearing, but it feels even heavier than a normal jacket should.

“The pressure helps me, sometimes,” he says. “Do you want it off?”  
  
Caleb shakes his head.

“Can you write?” Mollymauk asks.

Nod.

Mollymauk reaches into the outside pocket of his suitcase and pulls out a pad and pencil.

Caleb writes _I am okay. I just can’t speak right now_.

“Do you still want to eat?”

_I suppose so._

“If you don’t want to, we can wait. Or not. It doesn’t matter to me either way,” Mollymauk says.

Caleb waits. He feels the weight of the jacket on his shoulders and wraps his arms around himself as tight as they can go.

Gradually, his throat loosens. _I am okay now,_ he writes. He doesn’t want to try speaking just yet.

“Would you like your food now?” Mollymauk asks. His mouth has a bit of ice cream smeared on the corners where he’d been eating his drippy vanilla cone.

Caleb smiles, a little bit. When he nods, Mollymauk sets the bag of food in his lap.

“So, I got you a double cheeseburger, nuggets, and fries, plus a soda and that ice cream thing, with cookie pieces in it. It’s probably slightly melted by now, but it still tastes pretty good.”

Caleb slowly pulls a round wrapped item out of the bag, unwrapping what turns out to be a cheeseburger. He bites into it. Definitely not a very good burger, objectively. On the other hand, it’s food, which Caleb definitely hasn’t had in… two days? Maybe longer. He remembers the exact time he’d told his family that they needed to leave their lives behind, but he prefers to leave that in the vague fog of his memory where it belongs. He hadn’t eaten then either, come to think of it. Too terrified to even swallow.

To try and cover the feeling of tears brimming over, he takes another bite of the burger.

“It’s not that bad, I would hope,” Mollymauk remarks over his shoulder. He’s feigning nonchalance as he places a few fries in his mouth, but Caleb notices his hands shaking.

_No,_ writes Caleb, resting his hand lightly on Mollymauk’s shoulder as he shows him the notepad. _It’s wonderful. Thank you._ Caleb flips to a clean page and writes, _If you don’t mind my asking, how did you know this would help?_ He draws a very bad rendition of the coat.

Mollymauk freezes with his hand inside the bag, then chews thoughtfully for a second. “You want the short answer or the long one?” he asks.

_Whatever you’re willing to give,_ Caleb writes, biting into his burger again so that he doesn’t meet Mollymauk’s eyes.

Mollymauk picked at his wrist for a moment with one of his fingers. “Well, the short answer is that someone made me this coat because I was really jumpy for a while,” he said. “And the long one… I knew it was also helpful for a friend of mine.”

Caleb mulls that over for a moment. _You told me basically nothing,_ he writes as he sets aside his burger to reach in the bag and find something cold and clammy. He pulls his hand back out to find a half melted ice-cream…thing with some kind of Oreo pieces in it.

Mollymauk shrugs. “You don’t have to keep eating with me if that’s a dealbreaker,” he says, eating one of the nuggets. “Speaking of which, are you going to finish that?” He points to the last few bites of Caleb’s burger.  
  
Caleb shoves the whole thing in his mouth in response, nearly choking on it. He chews while Mollymauk bursts into laughter.

“All you had to write was no,” Mollymauk says as he starts biting into his now-soggy ice cream cone once again.

Caleb hates to admit it to himself, but he likes Mollymauk. Likes being around him, that is. He enjoys the company.

And he’s noticing something else, too. Before, people seemed to look at him, and scrutinize him a little bit. It made sense when he was dragging a suitcase and completely filthy, but since he started speaking to Mollymauk, no one has so much has spared him a second glance. So far, they’ve been distracted by the patchwork man with the shiny jewelry.

And Caleb’s starting to think maybe that’s not a bad thing.

He’s probably going to keep running. There’s an ever-present chance that Trent could send someone after him, and the longer he stays in one place, the more that chance exponentially increases.

But on the other hand, maybe it would be a good idea for him to seek out people like Mollymauk, in the next few towns he goes to. Maybe if he runs long enough, he can double back here and have a second date. Or… not date, but whatever they’re doing right now, eating cold fries on the curb outside of a McDonald’s.

“Mollymauk,” he says quietly, and Mollymauk turns towards him. “Do you usually hang out in this part of town? I might be leaving soon, but I’m thinking of coming back here later if you’d like to do this again. I might have some more money, then.”

Mollymauk swallows the last nugget he’s chewing. “If I’m being honest, I might be moving on soon, too. I mean, as far as I’ve spoken to you, you seem like a fairly decent traveling companion. Perhaps I could accompany you to your destination?"

Caleb feels like he’s going to regret this. He knows it, somewhere in his bones.

And yet… perhaps with someone to talk to, he’ll stop picturing the faces of Astrid and Wulf as he tries to sleep. Maybe he’ll stop being tempted to use the last of his change to call his parents every time he sees a payphone, and beg them to take him home.

(He only saw their numbers once, when he was setting them up under their new names. Doesn’t matter when his godforsaken memory still knows them by heart.)

“I didn’t have much of a destination in mind aside from ‘not here’,” Caleb says. “So if you have somewhere to be, I’ll come with you.”

Molly twines a strand of his hair around his finger. “Well, I’m looking for my family. Trouble is, at this point, they could be anywhere. So… would you like to pick a direction and see where we end up?”

Caleb can’t help his smile. “I guess so.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mollymauk and Caleb don't really have any idea where to go.
> 
> Sometimes, that's okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all your comments on the first chapter! It helped encourage me to get this next one out. Caduceus will probably show up in about four more chapters, but we'll see how it goes.

Caleb discovers several things about Mollymauk, over the next few weeks.

The first one is that Caleb is not particularly special. He is not the first person Mollymauk has helped, and will not be the last.

Mollymauk will offer food to other strangers who are homeless, seemingly at random. Some accept, some look at them with confusion, and others just refuse or outright sneer at them.

Whether Mollymauk offers food to someone doesn’t seem to depend on the amount of money the two of them currently have, or whether the person is particularly friendly or not, or even what mood Mollymauk is in.

The answer comes to Caleb later, when he’s thought for a while about it. Mollymauk is willing to buy food for people who have interesting stories.

Mollymauk himself certainly is willing to throw around stories. Caleb’s heard at least seventeen different versions of Mollymauk’s history now, each one more unlikely than the last.

Mollymauk is a traveler who took a wrong flight at one point and ended up in rural Connecticut.

Mollymauk was the lover of a senator and ran away when she became too controlling.

Mollymauk was an adopted child who was trying to seek out his parents by going down the list of all possible families in the foster system.

Mollymauk was a lost child of a long-dead royal family.

The stories all end roughly the same: he learned to read fortunes, and now he’s on the road, trying to find food to eat and places to stay.

Some people seem charmed by his stories. Some seem annoyed. Almost all seem confused.

Another thing is that Mollymauk always seems to relish being the center of attention. It doesn’t matter whether that’s good or bad attention, so long as he can get people to look at him for a little while. Of course, Caleb had figured that out, at least a little bit, when he first met him. Mollymauk’s main method of gathering money seems to be finding the busiest corner not already taken up by someone else, setting down a cup, and then trying every trick he can to get people to look at them. He announces his presence, loudly. He’ll do some cartwheels. He lays out cards and tries to get one of the passersby to take one.

Caleb can barely stand to be there, for so many reasons. First and foremost, because Mollymauk is doing everything he can to draw attention, and Caleb is trying his hardest to disappear.

Second, because Mollymauk is at least passable at being charming. Caleb has seen Mollymauk get frustrated with people. He knows now that Mollymauk doesn’t just effortlessly get along with everyone. He’s a lot less charismatic than he seemed when they first met, but he’s good at, if not being confident, at least playing at it. When he tries to do a cartwheel, lands on his wrist wrong, crashes to the ground, and springs back up beaming as if that's what he was planning all along, Caleb feels like Mollymauk must have charmed the passerby at least a little.

Caleb was certainly charmed by Mollymauk’s smile, at least.

The point being, Mollymauk knows how to play off a mistake. Caleb doesn’t. The best he can do is sit awkwardly next to Mollymauk’s cardboard fortune-telling sign (“Come learn of your future! Exciting new tales await you!”) and try not to look too uncomfortable. Caleb sits just off the corner of Mollymauk’s blanket, too stiff and not businesslike enough simultaneously. Every time someone makes eye contact with him, he can’t seem to find words, so he usually just ends up pointing to the sign and saying, “He’d be happy to do this for you.” And occasionally when they looked _just _enough like someone he remembered from the lab to be threatening, Caleb pulls up his hood and smushes a little further into himself, just to complete the awkwardness.

The sad part was, he was honestly trying. He tried smiling and waving at passerby for a while, but when everyone who passed him looked at him with some level of concern, he realized that acting was probably not his strong point.

So, after a few cities of this, of feeling like he was just getting in the way, Caleb suggests to Mollymauk that they might need to have some kind of destination, since their only method of finding somewhere to go for the past week had been picking the first destination on the list when checking the bus schedule.

So Caleb runs and hides in the library for a while. He takes books and flipped through them, trying to find a place for the two of them to go, but he notices that one of them has an Ikithon Labs location, and then he gets distracted trying to plan a route with the least number of places tied to Ikithon on it. After three hours of flipping through books, Caleb doesn’t feel any better about it. In fact, he might actually feel worse.

As he takes a few minutes to breathe and try to convince himself he’s safe, at least for now, an older woman with grey streaks through her hair comes up to talk to him.

“Are you feeling alright?” she asks, and Caleb nods. The absolute last thing he needs is for people to try and help him out. That’s a lost cause at this point.

“I’m fine,” he says quietly.

“Well, if you’re fine, you were looking through those travel books, right?” she asks, pointing to the one he’s holding.

“Yes,” Caleb says, being careful to keep his voice level. “I’m sorry, would you like them back?” he asks quietly. He feels sick. Some dirty-looking man that nobody knows has been flipping through the travel books for the past two hours in a panic.

The woman smiles. “That’s not what I meant. I just wanted to know if you could recommend any places for me and my husband to go on our vacation?”

It had felt, for the past hour, like Caleb’s brain was some kind of set of gears making a horrible scraping sound. But as this woman asks a question, suddenly the pieces slot back into place.

“How far do you want to go? How much money do you have?” Caleb asks, flipping back through his books.

Suddenly, his memory is useful for the first time since he had to drop out of school. He remembered all the details about the smaller towns around the area, and after he quietly explains the prices of a few inns to her, they’ve attracted a few onlookers.

The older woman nods after Caleb finishes speaking, before slipping a single dollar into his hand. “You look like you could use this,” she says.

Frankly, not many of the other handful of people who ask him questions have much to add, but he’s glad for it. Caleb is glad to be able to do something useful. The fact that he’s finally making a little bit of cash to pay back to Mollymauk is just a bonus.

When it’s half an hour before the library closes, Caleb wanders back to meet Mollymauk. It’s getting cold and sleeping by oneself is generally ill-advised.

As he joins Mollymauk just as the carny begins packing up his things for the night and folding up his blanket, Caleb hands him the money he’d managed to make today.

“That’s very sweet of you. Where did you find it?”

“Some people asked me for help in the library. And they were generous enough to give me a little money,” Caleb says, almost relieved.

“Well, I appreciate that, but… you were there for a while.” Mollymauk turns a card between his fingers as he speaks.

“Yes. Why? Did you need something?”

“Well, I was just thinking… let me put it this way. Did you want to stay with me? While I was entertaining them?”

Caleb swallows. “I felt like I should go look up where to head next.”

“That’s not answering the question.”

“I cannot… do any of the things you do. I can’t read cards, I certainly can’t dance, and I make everyone uncomfortable.”

Mollymauk shakes his head. “Caleb, if you wanted me to teach you how to read cards you could’ve just asked.” He pulls his tarot deck out of his pocket and peels a card with a lot of text on it off the back. “Basically, all you have to do is follow these instructions, and then if the meanings aren’t helping, throw them out the window.”

Caleb smiles. “But then what do you do if they don’t like the answer?”

“That’s the fun part. You have to come up with what they need to hear. Sometimes I don’t know what exactly they want to hear in that moment, but I try to always tell them what I need. These? These don’t mean anything,” Mollymauk says, fanning the cards out in front of him.

“And how would you know what they need better than they themselves do?” Caleb says.

He hadn’t meant anything by it, but no sooner have the words left his mouth that Mollymauk’s mouth is set in a thin hard line.

“So! Where to next?” Mollymauk says, quickly changing the subject.

About a week into the two of them keeping an eye on each other, he wakes up to find Mollymauk wearing a pair of small glittery earrings, a soft flowy blouse, and a pair of high-waisted jeans. Mollymauk looks for a moment like he (they?) were about to double back and duck back around the corner where they’d presumably changed. But a second later, Mollymauk turns back to Caleb.

“I hadn’t realized you were awake yet,” Mollymauk says. “I suppose I might as well mention now that this is going to be a regular thing,” they say, gesturing to their blouse.

“What is…”

“Sometimes I wear this. Sometimes I wear dresses. Sometimes I wear the same thing you found me in,” Mollymauk says. “So if that… I don’t know, makes you uncomfortable, I’ve heard it all before, and I’d really rather we just-“

“You’re beautiful,” Caleb says, interrupting Mollymauk as they start to ramble.

Mollymauk closes their mouth for a moment. Then they smile.

“What pronouns do you want me to use for you?”

Mollymauk shrugs. “Honestly, I’ll take pretty much anything. Use your discretion, obviously, based on what company we’re in, but if I didn’t like he/him, I would’ve told you.”

Caleb nods. The interaction later worries him. Well, every interaction later worries him, but this one worries him for a particular reason.

The way he’d said Mollymauk was beautiful, he’d meant it. It had come naturally, like saying “hello” to someone as you met them. And Mollymauk is an objectively beautiful person, with her shoulder-length hair and soft arms that looked like they’d be perfect for hugging and deep brown eyes that you could get lost in.

But the problem is that now, Caleb worries about what other words might fall out if he opens his mouth without thinking around Mollymauk.

Maybe other words he didn’t mean just yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, last year of college has been absolutely destroying me, and that's not even getting into writer's block. This is a shorter chapter than I'd like, but I mostly just wanted to get something up to show that this fic is not dead. I will try my best to have another chapter up sooner, but I can't make any promises.


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